'Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) urged Secretary of Education Betsy Devos on Wednesday to reverse a decision her department made last month that would impede its ability to investigate campus sexual assault.

The head of the Department of Education’s civil rights office, Candice Jackson, issued a memo in June instructing staff to scale back their investigations of systemic civil rights issues at public schools and universities, including the mishandling of sexual assault cases. Whereas the Obama administration required staff to review past information along with each complaint to identify potential systemic problems with how campuses handle rape cases or discriminate against certain classes of victims, the Trump administration will scrap those rules and investigate each complaint at face value.

Gillibrand and McCaskill, the latter of whom is a former prosecutor, are concerned that if the administration handles complaints on a case-by-case basis, rather than considering a school’s broader history of dealing with sexual assault, it will allow schools to continue to sweep the problem under the rug rather then forcing them to overhaul their policies. Title IX federal law requires the government to protect women at publicly funded schools from sex discrimination, including assault and harassment.'

'The Jaipur police have found that 4,206 fake cases were reported in Jaipur between 2015-16. In most cases, a false complaint was filed with an aim to extort money or defame a person to settle personal scores.

According to a senior police officer, these fake cases included allegations of harassment for dowry, molestation, cheating, and rape. These startling figures surfaces when Prafull Kumar, additional commissioner police (First) asked all DCP offices to provide details about cases where final report (FR) was found to be false.

"We have directed all DCPs to file a legal case against people involved in filing false case under Section 182 (IPC)," Kumar told TOI.'

'Kathleen Smith says her sex, not hiding millions of dollars in inappropriate spending, got her removed from the University of Louisville Foundation (ULF).

The foundation is a non-profit organization that raises money for the university. As The College Fix is reporting, an audit by Alvarez & Marsal has disclosed that Smith helped the former foundation president in the concealment of spending over an eight-year period.

Emails from the auditor detail just how Smith as foundation chief of staff sought to funnel $8.7 million of its endowment into shaky investments. She resigned last September not long after her boss, foundation and university president James Ramsey, pulled the plug.

But Smith’s lawyer says his client is the victim of a sexist “fall girl” plan that left her holding the bag for financial transactions that the foundation was aware of.'

'"Sweden's first man-free rock festival will see the light next summer," its organiser has confirmed, following a string of sexual assault reports at other festivals in the country.

It was announced on Saturday that Bråvalla, Sweden's largest one, would not be taking place in 2018 after police received reports of four rapes and 23 sexual assaults at this year's event.

Following the news, Swedish radio presenter and comedian Emma Knyckare tweeted: "What do you think about putting together a really cool festival where only non-men are welcome, that we'll run until ALL men have learned how to behave themselves?"'

'A dearth of marriagable men has left an “oversupply” of educated women taking desperate steps to preserve their fertility, experts say.

The first global study into egg freezing found that shortages of eligible men were the prime reason why women had attempted to take matters into their own hands.

Experts said “terrifying” demographic shifts had created a “deficit” of educated men and a growing problem of “leftover” professional women, with female graduates vastly outnumbering males in in many countries.

'CNN reported on the White House pay gap as though men and women working the same jobs are paid differently, but the fourth paragraph of their report tells a different story.

In its Monday article titled, “White House pays women 80 cents for every dollar paid to men,” CNN wrote that “women working in the White House earn an average salary of 80 cents for every dollar paid to their male colleagues,” adding those numbers reflect a “gender pay gap wider than the national average of 82 cents on the dollar.”
...
The news outlet buries the real news in its fourth paragraph, which states that the pay gap “is primarily due to more women filling lower-ranking jobs. Half the men working at the White House make $95,000 or more annually, while half the women $70,500 or less.”

Therefore women are not making 80 cents for ever dollar paid to their male counterparts because this statement implies that women are being paid less than men for doing equal work when they are in fact doing different jobs that demand different salaries.'

'Union minister Maneka Gandhi sparked a controversy when she said that she believes men do not commit suicide. The Union Minister for Women and Child Development further said that she hasn’t heard of a single case of men committing suicide. She was addressing a Facebook live session when she made these comments that angered several users who tagged her as ‘anti-men’.

Her answer to a query, during a Facebook Live session, about the government’s initiative to reduce suicide rates among men has left several people fuming. Gandhi questioned, “Which men have committed suicide? Why not try and resolve the situation rather than commit suicide – I have not heard/read of a single case.”

The minister, through the three-hour long chat on the social media site, was pilloried by people for being “anti- men” and spent most part of the chat trying to answer questions the over the issue. “What is @wcd doing to make sure parental alienation (father’s from his kids) is not in practise. Isn’t alienating a child from his/her biological father a crime?,” posted a social media user.'

'This research, How Australia Saves – a collaboration between Vanguard and Sunsuper – draws on the transactions and investment experiences of more than a million Sunsuper members.
...
As research by actuaries and consultants Rice Warner shows, average super balances are higher for males than females in all age groups. However, the gap "increases markedly" from age 35 when the majority of women take time off to have children and may lose opportunities for promotion at work.

After interrupting their careers to raise families, women often have difficulties returning to the workforce at an acceptable level. And one of the fundamental reasons for the retirement-savings gender gap is that women have lower average incomes than men.

Further, women frequently struggle to restore their finances after divorce because of family obligations and, again, their lower average incomes. Yet women have to stretch their retirement savings over longer life expectancies than men.

As Rice Warner has emphasised, potential solutions for the retirement-saving gender gap will have to come from the combined efforts of government, super funds (with education and advice), employers and individual members.'

'When Major League Baseball began two domestic-violence investigations last month, allegations against Chicago Cubs shortstop Addison Russell and Tampa Bay Rays catcher Derek Norris did not come from the usual source — a police report, or video, or court testimony.

Instead, they came from social media.

But little consideration was given to the role that social media — rather than law enforcement — might play in bringing potential domestic violence cases to light, according to a person in baseball familiar with the drafting of the agreement who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Kristen Eck, Norris’s former fiancée, wrote on Instagram that she had been physically and verbally abused by Norris in 2015. And after Russell’s wife, Melisa, wrote on Instagram that Russell had cheated on her, a friend of Melisa Russell’s posted that Addison Russell had hit his wife in front of his two young children.

Norris, who has since been waived by the Rays, and Russell have denied accusations of abuse. Pat Courtney, an M.L.B. spokesman, confirmed that the league was investigating both cases but declined to say more.'

'Imagine that a man gets up to speak to a crowd, and he tells them that women are dumb. Imagine that he jokes that having a wife is like having another child to look after. Imagine that he tells this hilarious joke: Women are like fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it’s our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you’d like to have dinner with.
...
Tune into any female comedian, writer, or commentator, and you’ll find that male bashing is a favorite topic of conversation. Men, according to these women, are nothing more than money in the bank account and sperm donors. It seems that women have free reign to say whatever they want about men, and it’s deemed acceptable, and, for the most part, true.
...
And, we’ve all done it. We hear it so much we do it without even thinking. When we do this, we send messages to our husbands that we don’t respect them, that we enjoy belittling and embarrassing them, and that their feelings aren’t important. Are our husbands used to this talk? Of course, they’ve heard it their entire lives in a million different forms. But, they are not made better by it. They aren’t convicted by it or motivated to change when we talk this way. In fact, they are probably resolved that they cannot make women happy, that no matter how hard they work or how much they sacrifice or how wonderful they are, women are still going to say,Yeah, but you are still just a baby in a man’s clothes. If it weren’t for me, you would be a wandering idiot with no sense of where to go or what to do.'

'Today, being white and male are the two single greatest risk factors for suicide in the US. That’s according to the authors of: Explaining Suicide: Patterns, Motivations and What Notes Reveal. Psychology professor Cheryl Meyer, is among them. She says “hegemonic masculinity” is what’s killing these men. They try to live up to a social stereotype no one could measure up to. Not only that, their model doesn’t square with today’s world.

In 2015, two Princeton economists found that the death rate among white, middle-aged men, rather than falling, like with most other groups, was instead rising. The mortality rate for working class white men, between the ages of 45 and 54 had been steadily rising since 1999.

According to suicide prevention expert, Dr. Christine Moutier, white, middle-aged men account for 70% of deaths from suicide each year. Nine-tenths of them are from a lower socioeconomic class.
...
Caucasian men have enjoyed white hegemony in the US. That’s changing. As the “Browning of America” takes shape, whites will become a minority, projected to take place by 2045. Although this may usher in more social equality, the loss of a given-at-birth superiority will chafe a certain segment of the Caucasian community.
...
They are trying to fit into a role that’s no longer supported by the real world. One way to overcome this, is to update our definition of masculinity for the 21st century. Another would be to build a more gender neutral society, where everyone is looked upon on an individual basis, despite their gender. Regardless of the path we take, men and society as a whole, must become less rigid regarding It's outlook on masculinity and somehow adopt a more pluralistic view.'

'The leader of Norway’s second-largest party said she would not advance prohibitions against non-medical circumcision of boys younger than 18 after she voted for a motion opposing the ritual.

Siv Jensen, the leader of the Progress Party — a coalition partner of the ruling Conservative Party — voted in favor of a motion opposing ritual circumcision during the annual party convention held June 6 north of Oslo.

Jensen, who is Norway’s finance minister, later said she had intended to vote against the motion, which passed with a comfortable majority, explaining the voting was “confusing.” She also said she “respects the will” of the majority of party members who voted in favor of the ban.

Yet during a meeting Monday in Oslo with a rabbi from Belgium and another rabbi from the Netherlands, Jensen said she would not advance prohibitions on the ritual.'

'A Maine health teacher has been placed on leave after allegations that she sexually abused a student who revealed the affair after a suicide attempt.

Jill Lamontagne, a 29-year-old working at Kennebunk High School, was also banned from contact with the unidentified 17-year-old boy under a two-year protection order reported by the Portland Press Herald.

That order says the teen confirmed rumors about a relationship with the teacher earlier this month the day after he took a variety of pills in a suspected suicide “because of a girl.”

He then claimed that he and Lamontagne had sex “numerous times” including at school, at her house and in her car.'

'The stories are relentlessly covered by tabloid media – inevitably with a mugshot of the teacher paired with “sexy” photos from her Facebook or Instagram accounts – and the stories are often predictably similar. Perhaps the teacher is found out when the boys boast about it to their friends, or when a parent finds out – and she can’t evade guilt because of sexts or flesh-flashing photos she sent. Details are drawn out like a soap opera: Sex in the teacher’s car; indiscrete emails and text messages, with photos; and then the discovery as the boy tells a buddy or a nosy mom finds evidence of the malfeasance. It’s a virtual syndrome.
...
The apparent increase in these incidents has piqued more than just popular curiosity. Scholars have begun to research and analyze the scope and nature of the syndrome.
...
There is a great deal of data that points to “a widespread denial of women as potential sexual aggressors that could work to obscure the true dimensions of the problem,” she writes in the book.'

Trump administration officials in the departments of Education and Justice told a gathering of college attorneys this week that they aren’t going to search indefinitely for Title IX and other civil rights violations if the evidence isn’t there.
...
Crucially for colleges that have erred in favor of accusers in the face of bullying from Lhamon, Jackson said her office will stop treating “subregulatory guidance” such as 2011’s seminal “Dear Colleague” letter on Title IX as “binding mandates.”

The lawyers apparently loved it: Inside Higher Ed notes Lhamon was “roundly booed” when she spoke to the National Association of College and University Attorneys several years ago.'

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